Cambourne

Coordinates: 52°13′N 0°04′W / 52.22°N 0.07°W / 52.22; -0.07

Cambourne is a new settlement and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, in the district of South Cambridgeshire. It lies on the A428 road between Cambridge, 9 miles (14 km) to the east, and St Neots and Bedford to the west. It comprises the three villages of Great Cambourne, Lower Cambourne and Upper Cambourne. The area is close to Bourn Airfield. The final population is expected to be around 10,000. Cambourne has recently been used by government departments and in school geography lessons as it provides a useful case study of designing and building a settlement from scratch.

It is the largest settlement in South Cambridgeshire, with a population just over 8,000 in the 2011 UK census. The population continues to rise sharply each year because of continued house-building and a very high birthrate.

History

As part of plans to build thousands of new homes in the south-east of England, a new settlement on 400 ha of former agricultural land, nine miles west of Cambridge was considered in the late 1980s. In 1994 the S106 agreement from the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was completed by the developers (McA), the local authority, Cambridgeshire County Council and the developers together with the landholders. The new settlement was to be constructed by three of Britain's leading house builders, Bovis Homes, Bryant Homes and Taylor Wimpey. Planning permission for the development at Monkfield Park was given in November 1996, while construction began in June 1998, on what was previously farmland.